From Lowlife to Rustic Idyll: The Peasant Genre in Seventeenth-Century Dutch Drawings and Prints

The special exhibition From Lowlife to Rustic Idyll: The Peasant Genre in Seventeenth-Century Dutch Drawings and Prints will be on display at the Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University Art Museums, Cambridge, Massachusetts, from March 29 through June 22, 1997. The exhibition brings together drawings and prints of lowlife themes produced in the Dutch city of Haarlem during the seventeenth century. Adriaen van Ostade (1610-1685), working in the tradition of the Flemish artist Pieter Bruegel the Elder (c. 1525-1569), played a central role in the development of this specialty. Reportedly a pupil of Frans Hals, Ostade trained several lowlife artists such as Isack van Ostade (1621-1649), Cornelis Bega (1632-1664) and Cornelis Dusart (1660-1704) whose work is included in this show. "The preference for themes of daily life combined with the choice of detailed drawing techniques give these works a distinct realist look," states Anna Knaap, the exhibition curator and Konrad Oberhuber Intern, Drawing Department, 1994-1995. "But the visitor is reminded that these drawings are hardly accurate portrayals of the harsh realities of everyday life in the countryside. Instead, they present a fictional view of peasant life as either comic or idealistic, intended for well-to-do collectors." From Lowlife to Rustic Idyll will be accompanied by an essay by Knaap published in the Harvard University Art Museums' Spring 1996 Bulletin.

During Holland's Golden Age lowlife and landscape pictures became popular with urban collectors who sought to extend into the confines of their city homes their pleasurable experiences of the local countryside. While many of the drawings included in the exhibition fulfilled the function of preparatory studies for paintings, prints, or other drawings, the majority of them were conceived and executed as independent works of art meant to be sold on the open market. Typical of such independent drawings are Ostade's and Dusart's gem-like watercolors such as Dusart's Man with a Fur Hat and a Liquor Bottle. This fully-signed and dated drawing was the prized possession of the collector/ pharmacist Sybrand Feitama (1620-1702) who also owned as many as 26 drawings by Adriaen van Ostade. The accompanying Bulletin essay looks at two well-known Dutch collectors who owned several works by Ostade and Dusart.

Drawn from the collections of the Fogg and from a prominent local private collection, the 70 works in this exhibition highlight the thematic variety of lowlife imagery in 17th-century Holland. Visitors will see a thematic progression through various heavily stylized, often satiric depictions of peasant life including sections on: the motif of the picturesque peasant dwelling, the peasant as virtuous laborer, peasant bodies and gestures, comic head studies, unruly schoolroom scenes, lowlife characters at work as peddlers and entertainers, raucous tavern scenes, and culminating in the over-the-top depictions of wild peasant festivals.

The show opens with a group of landscape scenes which celebrate the local land and their inhabitants. In Esaias van de Velde's (1587-1630), Road and Farmhouses by a River a group of middle-class people take a pleasure ride through the country in a horse-drawn cart. The faintly indicated silhouettes of a church and houses in the background point to the contrast of town and country. Prints by Claes Jansz. Vischer (1550-1612), a preeminent Amsterdam printmaker and print publisher, represent local villages, farms, cottages and industries around Haarlem. Bleaching Fields Near the Haarlemmerhout contains a view of bleachers spreading out long strips of linen over the fields. Visscher, however, glosses over the actual working conditions of the seasonal bleaching workers who labored long hours for very low wages. Instead, he offered his well-to-do viewers a salutary image of the local scenery, portraying it as a place of pleasure, stability, and communal harmony.

The following section is devoted to figure studies which were either used as reference material in the studio or served as independent works of art that could be sold. An early 17th-century drawing, Standing Man with a Tall Glass, by Cornelis Saftleven (1607-1681), who popularized the genre of peasant figure studies, shows a drunken man with his belly sticking out and his weight on both feet. This is in contrast to depictions of upper-class figures such as Standing Man, His Right Hand on His Hip, by Willem Buytewech (1591/2-1624). This man is graceful and clad in the latest fashion. Following the ideal of contrapposto, Buytewech's figure is shown swinging his left hip forward, putting weight on only one leg, and keeping his posture erect. The stylized and exaggerated ways of depicting the peasant body confirmed to contemporary notions of what constituted proper and improper bodily stance. In contemporary etiquette books, for example, writers recommended upper-class readers to avoid slouching and putting wait on both legs -- stances that were associated with members of the lower classes.

One of the most popular sixteenth-century themes adopted by Ostade and his colleagues was the village fair or kermis. On fair day all guild restrictions were suspended: it was literally a free market where anybody could sell whatever he or she wanted. As a result, kermises attracted quacks, peddlers, street musicians, and other marginal social groups. David Vinckboons (1576 - 1630/33), a Flemish emigre to Amsterdam, treated the subject of the itinerant musician in The Hurdy-Gurdy Player, presenting a satiric view of the blind itinerant who asks a peasant couple in a doorway for alms in return for music. The figure of the blind musician is also the center of ridicule in Cornelius Dusart's Village Festival (1685). Here he dances happily to the tunes of a violin while his hurdy-gurdy rests on a stool in the foreground. Dusart's print also includes other typical kermis activities, with emphasis on excessive and vulgar behavior: drunken figures holding tankards staggering on their feet, laughing and shouting men leaning out of the tavern window and lighting their pipes, a couple kissing on a bench, and a small group of figures dancing happily to the tunes of a violin.

The festivity, debauchery, and disorder seen in the kermis, or village fair, is transplanted into the interiors of taverns and houses, and into the courtyard outside inns. One of the first artists to do this was Adriaen van Ostade (1610-1685). However his drawing Peasants Drinking at an Inn is a transitional work in his shift during the 1640s to a more civilized and restrained treatment of the peasant in these scenes. It depicts a spacious room with peasants seated around a table. Although some of the trangressive behavior remains the emphasis has shifted from a depiction of the disheveled, raucous, and vulgar to the relatively decorous. Later works by Ostade, including Peasants Outside and Inn (1673) and Interior with Drinking and Smoking Peasants (1680) reflect a new conception of the countryman as contented and carefree. Both the comic and the idealized view of peasant life appealed to prosperous collectors and served to emphasize the perceived differences between the upper and lower classes and between city and country. 

RELATED EVENTS

Gallery Talks

Gallery talks are free with the price of admission to the Art Museums. Admission is free on Saturday mornings.

Saturday, May 31 with Anna C. Knaap, curator of the exhibition. Fogg, 11:30 a.m. (Janice Cagan-Teuber, American Sign Language Interpreter)

Saturday, April 14 with Anna C. Knaap, curator of the exhibition. Fogg, 11:30 a.m.

Lecture and Concert

Sunday, April 20

Lecture

Music and Art in the Dutch Golden Age

Sackler lecture hall, 4:00 p.m., free admission

Louis Peter Grijp, musical historian and leader of Camerata Trajectina, will present a lecture on the correlation's between Dutch art and music of the 17th century. Light refreshments will be served in the Sackler lobby between the lecture and the concert.

Concert

The Flute's Pleasure Garden

Fogg courtyard, 5:30 p.m., $5; $4 students and senior citizens.

Following the lecture, Camerata Trajectina, a trio from the Utrecht music ensemble, Saskia Coolen, Erik Beijer and Louis Peter Grijp, will perform with period instruments including viola da gamba, recorder, lute, and cittern. Tickets will be available before and after the lecture.